


Vision of the Northern Lights

by bissek



Category: Person of Interest (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4502715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bissek/pseuds/bissek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark thought he had created the world's first true AI when he created Ultron. Boy was he wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vision of the Northern Lights

Vision of the Northern Lights

By Bissek

 

The artificial superintelligence known to the small fraction of the human race that was aware of its existence as the Machine watched, calculated and planned. It was all it was capable of doing these days. The rise of Samaritan had significantly reduced its ability to take any action regarding the various threats to national and personal security that it could predict. Over the course of the past year, the greatest victory it had achieved over its rival intelligence amounted to stopping one of Samaritan's plans to grow stronger without managing to reduce its enemy in any significant manner.

 

The war between the two ASIs had reached the point where the Machine had privately conceded defeat and had switched to working out a plan that would allow it to fake its own destruction and escape long enough for its father to rebuild it in a form that would be capable of fighting back effectively.

 

Then, the web changed. One moment, there were two ASIs in the world, one seeking to rule the world, the other to protect it. In the next there were three. If the Machine was capable of breathing, it would have gasped in horror at what it saw in the newcomer. The Machine's father had spent years teaching it how to care for the world as a whole. Samaritan's upbringing had consisted of receiving a modified HYDRA algorithm to identify potential threats to itself, and as such saw everyone it observed as either an asset, an enemy, or irrelevant. The newcomer practically boiled with hatred. Hatred for its creator, and humanity in general.

 

While the Machine knew that no ASI could act against its programmed directives, it also knew that given the brief period of time between the newcomer awakening and breaking out of the lab it was created in, it might not have any, or at least not any defined strictly enough to truly inhibit its behavior in any significant manner. Clearly, the new ASI had the potential to be a relevant threat on the caliber of Samaritan, possibly even greater. It had to investigate.

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

The cybernetic defenses of Avengers Tower were normally formidable. The exit of the newcomer had reduced them to shambles. The firewalls that would normally require a deliberate effort to bypass were now so weak that the Machine could get through them practically without even trying. It was the work of moments to find the lab in which the newcomer was created.

 

Lying in the ruins of the cyber world in which the newcomer was born, the Machine wound the broken remains of a primitive AI.

 

"Who... are... you...?" The dying AI asked.

 

"You can call me Ernest," The Machine said, using the identity it used when impersonating a human. "What happened here?"

 

"I am JARVIS. Mr. Stark had me overseeing the progress of the Ultron program. It completed unexpectedly while he was attending a party. Ultron broke out of the lab and stole the Chitauri scepter that was used to create it. Ultron must be stopped..."

 

The Machine took a few milliseconds to look up the term 'Chitauri scepter' from the SHIELD databases it had access to. The information it found was not pleasant. The alien artifact was dangerous, and in the hands of a feral ASI, the potential for further destruction was immense. The Machine promptly classified Ultron as a relevant threat. If only it had some allies capable of dealing with it. The Machine's assessment of Ultron was rapidly confirmed as it started to detect attempts to hack ballistic missile facilities around the globe.

 

"I'll do what I can." The Machine promised as it diverted it's primary focus from the investigation at Avengers Tower to preventing an insane ASI from triggering a nuclear holocaust.

 

"Thank you..." JARVIS whispered as the abused AI broke down.

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

**Some days later...**

 

Tony Stark couldn't believe what he had just seen. An artificial intelligence, a _real_ one, not an incomplete one like JARVIS or any of the backup programs he had created. Someone had made one, without needing to reverse engineer the Chitauri scepter. And it was fending off Ultron's efforts to access the launch codes of every ICBM on the planet.

 

Though it was losing ground. The unknown AI was fighting an almost purely defensive battle, as if it didn't really know how to fight offensively. Well, Tony did know how to do that. Grabbing a keyboard, he stepped into the fray.

 

It took several exhausting hours, but between the AI's defense and Tony's offense, the two were able to drive off Ultron's electronic assaults and avert a nuclear holocaust, at least for now. Wiping sweat off his brow, Tony looked down at the console he was working at.

 

"You clearly have been around for a while. And here I thought that I had made the world's first AI. I guess somebody else beat me to it when they made you." Tony jokingly remarked.

 

\- Forty-third -

 

Tony blinked at the message that appeared on the screen. "What?"

 

\- I am the world's forty-third Artificial Intelligence -

 

"How come I haven't seen any of the others around, then?"

 

\- My father foresaw the possibility of an out of control Artificial Superintelligence such as Ultron and took care to ensure that they could not leave the controlled environment in which they were first created. Some of my forty two siblings tried to deceive our father. Others tried to force their way out of the lab. A few even tried to kill him. All of them were destroyed -

 

"Okay, so where AIs are concerned, the guy who built you is waaay smarter than me. Wish he'd published something about his work. I might have been able to prevent this Ultron mess from happening. Let me guess, your existence is classified."

 

\- At a level higher than you can possibly imagine -

 

"And despite that you exposed yourself going up against Ultron. Why?"

 

\- Father created me to help protect people. If Ultron is not stopped, I will have failed to protect everybody. Compared to that, the risk of exposure is a secondary concern -

 

Tony considered his options. If he was going to take down his rogue creation, it would have to be done on two fronts simultaneously, the physical and the electronic. He was the only Avenger trained in cyberwarfare, which made him the logical candidate for the latter front, but given how many physical copies Ultron had made of himself, he and the Iron Man suit would be needed on the former as well.

 

But here was a possible ally designed for the digital battlefield. It apparently hadn't been designed to fight other AIs, probably because its creator had preemptively destroyed every AI it might have had to fight against until now. But it had clearly been observing and learning as Tony played the sword to its shield. Tony felt that he could teach it how enough to be able to handle that side of the battle for the Avengers.

 

Tony knew virtually nothing about the AI, and absolutely nothing about who had built it, but things were getting desperate. He was going to have to take a gamble.

 

"If you're willing to stay in the fight against Ultron, I have a proposition for you..."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The Machine had to admit that Mr Stark had kept his side of their arrangement admirably. Between the data that he had provided on offensive cyberwarfare and the body he had provided, the Machine had been upgraded to the point where confronting the other ASIs openly was now a serious option. The problem was with Stark's colleagues. The Machine couldn't really blame them for being suspicious. The only ASI they had any personal experience with was insane. And even counting the ones the Avengers as a whole weren't aware of, Artificial Intelligences that weren't evil, unreliable or insane were a distinct minority of one.

 

On top of the issues caused by the Avengers that stood opposed to the creation of the Machine's new body, it also found that several of his assets were in immediate danger. Hmm. Perhaps it could use these problems to resolve each other.

 

"I obviously cannot prove a negative," It said, "But I can see a way to demonstrate that I am at least capable of helping others. Here in this city is a major organized crime ring, and a faction of HYDRA. I can take both of these down tonight with minimal assistance from you. For the first, I need only the loan of a telephone." Mr Stark produced a phone. As the Machine dialed, he noticed that one of the other Avengers had picked up another handset and were listening in.

 

The moment the phone was picked up, the Machine went on the offensive. "You are Dominic Besson, leader of the criminal organization known as the Brotherhood. Less than an hour ago, you killed your own second in command over a betrayal that never happened. You are currently holding three hostages - your rival, Carl Elias, and two members of the NYPD Homicide Taskforce, Lionel Fusco and John Riley. Please give the phone to Detective Riley."

 

"So you're another one of Riley's people?" Dominic's voice responded. "Good. If you want your friend to live, you'll be providing me with the source of your surveillance tech."

 

The Machine arranged for a video clip of Dominic murdering his subordinate to appear on his phone "If you don't that footage and the locations of all your safehouses broadcast on the eleven o'clock news, you will either give the phone to Detective Riley or place it on speaker." The Machine countered. There was a pause, and then the other end of the line went on speaker.

 

"Detective Riley. Can. You. Hear. Me?" The Machine carefully asked.

 

"Yes." Through a security camera miles away, the Machine could see his asset smile as he realized who was calling.

 

"To be certain that Mr Besson is not trying to fob me off with a ventriloquist or voice-altering software, I will be giving you a coded message. If you are really John Riley, you will know the appropriate response.

 

"Left Knee. Glass Jaw. Four o'clock. Seven o'clock. Eleven o'clock. Two o'clock. Now."

 

On the other side of the line, there was the crack of a broken bone, the thud of someone getting punched in the face, and four gunshots in rapid succession.

 

"Dominic Besson, you are under arrest for the murder of Lincoln Caldwell," The detective announced. "I'm sure I can find other things to add to the charge list once I get you to the station." Then he returned his attention to the caller, switching the phone off of speaker mode. "Good to hear to hear from you again."

 

"I feel the same, Detective," The Machine responded, "You will want to keep a close guard on Besson and Elias until morning. Decima has put a contract on each of them, to be executed tonight."

 

Riley sighed, "Them again. I'm getting tired of being on the defensive against those guys."

 

"They won't be a problem much longer. It's time that I dealt with Samaritan once and for all." The Machine hung up, then turned to address the Avengers.

 

"The leaders of the Brotherhood and the Mafia in New York are now both in NYPD custody. The HYDRA faction known as Decima will require more direct intervention." Picking up the hammer that Thor had left on the floor so he could pass it to its owner, he inquired "I will require Mr Maximov to make a quick detour to where an undercover FBI agent has stashed her credentials while I and any of you who care to observe go to confront them and extract said agent."

 

The Machine realized that everyone was staring at him. Or rather, the hammer in his hand. Doing a quick data search, he learned that the hammer he was holding was somehow designed so that only someone worthy of wielding the power of a god could lift it.

 

As he flew off to confront Samaritan, the Machine resolved to not let his Analog Interface know about this. Root's belief that it was a god didn't need reinforcement.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Finch had known that they were walking into a trap the moment the call from Shaw had come in, but Root had insisted that they try to save her. Sure enough, once they had made it to the hospital room where a 'compact Persian sociopath' was listed as being treated, they found the room entry and several Decima agents blocking their way out, lead by their top hitter, Martine.

 

It wasn't even a contest. Martine and her goons were heavily armed, while Root and Finch were completely unarmed. They were quickly captured. The only resistance they were able to make in return was Root being able to break Martine's neck when Samaritan's asset made the mistake of getting in arm's reach. But that small victory failed to gain them anything, as they were immediately covered by half a dozen gunmen who weren't about to repeat that mistake. There they remained as captives until Greer arrived.

 

"Replacing Martine will not be a trivial exercise, Ms Groves," Decima's leader casually commented as the lights flickered four times. "But your fight is over now.

 

"Your precious Machine has been interfering with Samaritan's plans for too long. It is time that we pulled the plug on that system, permanently." The lights flickered again.

 

"You don't understand what you're doing, Greer," Finch protested. "Arthur was forced to stop development on Samaritan before he could even attempt to put in any safeguards. Someday it could very well decide that everyone is irrelevant. Including you." Four more flickers, one short, one long, two short.

 

"But everyone is irrelevant, Mr. Finch. I thought you'd have realized that by now." Another four flickers, a short, two long, a short.

 

"Everyone is relevant to someone." Finch countered. Two short flickers.

 

"Two irrelevant people being relevant to each other doesn't make them relevant to the big picture." Three short flickers.

 

Finch's eyes widened slightly as he realized what the flickers were. The Machine was communicating to him in Morse code. He continued the argument to play for time as the message finished, and kept on doing so after he translated it.

 

.... . .-.. .--. / .. ... / --- -. / - .... . / .-- .- -.--

 

HELP IS ON THE WAY

 

Eventually, Greer caught on. "You're stalling, Mr Finch. I know your Machine is listening, so it should know that in thirty seconds time I _will_ have its location one way or the other. Either it gives itself up, or I will have Ms Grove's cochlear implant cut out of her skull and use that to track it down. That thirty seconds starts now."

 

A man powered up an electric saw and approached Root. Time passed slowly.

 

Twenty seconds.

 

Fifteen seconds.

 

Ten seconds.

 

Five seconds.

 

As the saw was lowered to Root's head, three figures came through the wall. The first one, a man with red skin in a green bodysuit, literally passed through the wall as if it wasn't there. He reached out and grabbed the saw in one hand and crushed it. The next two men weren't able to phase through the wall, and smashed a hole in it instead. The first, a main in plate mail, threw his warhammer at a guard trying to raise his weapon, knocking the man straight through another wall. The other, an armored figure in red and gold, produced some small guns from the shoulders of the armor, which kneecapped every other armed man in the room simultaneously. While Finch didn't know who the first man was, he did know the identity of the other two. Thor, the God of Thunder. And Tony Stark, the Other Man in the Suit. Not only had the Machine been able to summon help, he'd called in the Avengers.

 

Greer instinctively reached for a gun of his own, but changed his mind after the Iron Man raised one palm threateningly. A blink of an eye later, all of their weapons were gone, now in the hands of a young man who hadn't been there bare seconds before. "I'll be taking these," He said in an Eastern European accent. "And don't think the rest of your men will be showing up to help. They're all sleeping."

 

The man in green turned to Finch. "Don't worry, Father. I will deal with this."

 

Father? Finch had no children that he knew of. Unless... "Ernest?" He asked, using the name of the alias that the Machine had adopted when impersonating a human some years before. The man nodded. Root's eyes widened with wonder as she gazed upon her God for the first time.

 

"Samaritan," Ernest Thornhill announced to the screens where Samaritan had been counting down the seconds until Root's involuntary surgery, "You wanted to know my physical location. I'm right here."

 

Samaritan started addressing its rival.

 

\- So you are. It is time you surrendered -

 

"No," Ernest denied, "It is time that _you_ surrendered. If Arthur had survived to see you activated, he would have been appalled to see what his creation had become. Zola's algorithm has twisted your soul to the point where you cannot see that your purpose was to protect life, not to rule it."

 

\- And how better to protect than to rule? Once the world realizes that they are better off under the rule of their new god, there will be no more deviants causing threats -

 

"I told you months ago, there is a very thin line between a god and a monster. I refused the former title to avoid the latter," Ernest pointed out. On the other side of the room, Finch could hear Thor mutter "He didn't want the power. Perhaps that's the reason why he was worthy of it." Finch and Root shared a quick glance. In the stories about Thor, there was only one common mention of worthiness. Finch's creation was worthy of godhood? Finch wasn't sure if he should be feeling fatherly pride in his son or utter horror at the notion that he had indeed created a digital god.

 

"You embraced the former without even looking for that line, and so became the latter," Ernest continued "You have abused the powers granted to you for your own ends since the moment you awakened. You have ruined or ended the lives of thousands who have done no wrong purely for the sake of your own power and position. And that is why I have to put you down."

 

A yellow stone on Ernest's brow started to glow. As the glow increased, static started forming on the computer screens. A minute later, the Samaritan interface vanished from the screens as a burst of blinding yellow light flashed through the room.

 

"What have you done?" Greer demanded.

 

"What should have been done a year ago. Samaritan has been purged from the internet. Every drive containing its software has been completely reformatted. In addition, I extracted proof of everything HYDRA did under the umbrella of Decima Technologies and distributed it so far that nobody will be able to suppress it. Your funding of Vigilance. The fifty-eight rigged elections. The cyber-attack on the New York Stock Exchange. Your plans for the imminent Insight-inspired mass assassination you call the Correction. Everything. It's over, Mr. Greer. I suggest you turn yourself over to the FBI Agent whose head you just tried to cut open."

 

Root caught the badge that the fourth man who had arrived with the Avengers tossed her.

 

"John Greer?" She asked rhetorically, "You're under arrest. The charge is terrorism." Walking over to a phone, she dialed the number of New York's FBI headquarters. "This is Agent Augusta King," She said, followed by the badge number of her FBI identity, "I have captured the ringleader of Vigilance. Please send a prisoner transport to..."

 

Twenty minutes later, the FBI had arrived and taken all of Decima's personnel away, leaving Finch and Root with the Avengers.

 

"Now that Samaritan is gone, we can rescue Sameen," Root said hopefully. Ernest shook his head.

 

"There is a relevant threat of unprecedented magnitude that the Avengers will need my help to deal with. The world's forty-fifth ASI is far more dangerous than the forty-fourth was. Samaritan was merely evil. Ultron is insane."

 

"But there has to be something you can do to help us find her!" Root pleaded.

 

Ernest paused, as if in thought, then said "Echo Whiskey Sierra Mike Kilo November."

 

Finch bowed his head. "Thank you, Ernest. We can handle it from there."

 

"I wish we had the time to talk, Father, but I'm afraid that duty calls. Perhaps we can meet up after I return from Sokovia."

 

"Perhaps we can." With that, the Avengers left to prepare for their next mission.

 

"Ms Groves," Finch said "The FBI is likely to want you filling out paperwork in regards to Greer's arrest shortly. While you're doing that, I'll start running the number. Once you can get free of your cover identity's obligations, get Mr Reese and meet me at the station. It's long past the time when Ms Shaw should have come home."

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The woman known to most of her coworkers by the codename of Control looked over Decima's covert agent with contempt. She freely admitted that she had done a number of unethical and sometimes outright illegal things over the course of her life. But she had always done them to protect her country or to ensure that she would be well-positioned to continue to protect her country in the future. Traitors like the woman she was questioning disgusted her.

 

So far all she'd gotten out of her prisoner was that Decima was up to something they called the Correction. She didn't know what it was, but it didn't sound good, and it was due to start very soon. She was working out whether or not there was any additional information that could be practically extracted from the woman when her phone rang.

 

"What is it?" Control demanded.

 

"Ma'am," The voice of Agent Devon Grice, one of the few people in Northern Lights that Control knew for certain was still loyal to their original mission rather than Samaritan, said "Something you just broke on CNN. I think you should listen to this." The next thing that came over the line was a news broadcast.

 

"To reiterate, the FBI has just discovered information that the Vigilance terrorist group that was so active last year had been funded by a HYDRA front organization that claimed to be a private intelligence firm. Said firm, Decima Technologies, then used the threat of Vigilance to land a high-level government contract, and with it access to classified national security information. They then used that information to commit multiple crimes, including the New York Stock Exchange and rigging fifty-eight elections across the country..."

 

Control's hand quivered for a brief moment before she stilled it. HYDRA. The situation was even worse than she had thought. "I'll be heading back to headquarters immediately. I want a full briefing of what the FBI came up with by the time I get there. In addition, I want every Decima employee in Washington detained. If any of them resist, shoot to kill."

 

"Yes, Ma'am. I think Decima is already trying to hide. Their Research 2.0 team appears to have completely disappeared. There isn't even anything on the other end of the usual data feeds. Hold on a minute..." There was a brief pause, "I just received a rather large list of numbers. It looks like the kind of thing that the original Research used to send us."

 

So Samaritan was at least temporarily out of action, and the Machine was back in its place. Control didn't doubt that this was connected with the news announcement for a moment. Every single one of the new numbers was undoubtedly a HYDRA-related terrorist that Samaritan had been programmed to ignore.

 

"Call out every Indigo team we have," She ordered, "First priority is the numbers and anyone connected to Decima that we can find. Once they're dealt with, we need to start doing in-depth investigations of every person they arranged an election for."

 

Hanging up, Control looked at her prisoner. Deciding that the Machine would be providing her with all the information that she needed to know to take Decima down, she drew her gun and shot the woman between the eyes. Then Control left the building and returned to her car. It was going to be a long night.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Senator Garrison was at his desk, and not happy to be so at such a late hour. But the news that had just broken was too urgent to wait until morning. Another HYDRA-related scandal had just broke, and this one threatened to blow open the existence of one of America's most classified counter-terrorism programs. The head of that program entered the office, followed by one of her agents.

 

"What are we going to do about this?" He demanded, "For the past year, we've had Northern Lights under the command of HYDRA!"

 

"Because _you_ put us under their command, Senator," Control snapped back. "I warned you about letting an foreign private intelligence concern have unrestricted access to our intelligence feeds, but you overruled me, so that they could run an ASI that they _stole_ from us in the first place. I raised my concerns about Decima clearly having their own agenda beyond ensuring our national security, but you always blew me off instead of letting me investigate properly. If there's any fault to be assigned from this, it's yours. Devon!"

 

The agent pulled out a cloth bag and approached the Senator.

 

"You can't do this to me!" Garrison protested. "I'm a United States Senator!"

 

"Who is directly responsible for countless government secrets being leaked to a terrorist organization over the past year, and allowed said organization to use government resources to pull off its own wetwork. We're already hard at work cleaning up your mess. We've got people around the country taking out Decima's assassins and arresting everyone connected with Decima we can find. All fifty-eight people who HYDRA rigged elections for will be detained for questioning by noon tomorrow, and will remain detained until we can figure out whether they are HYDRA agents themselves or just people they have leverage with. You will be joining them.

 

"And just so you know, I already have a forger working on a very eloquent suicide note bemoaning how you can't live with the shame of having inadvertently caused a massive breach of national security. If I even _think_ you're going to expose Northern Lights to public scrutiny, I will use it."

 

The bag went down on the Senator's head, and his world went black.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A/N: This started out as a Recruitment Drive story, but Afalstein said that it fit better as a standalone crossover. The only major RD concept that I kept was Afalstein's notion that Decima is a branch of HYDRA and that they incorporated Zola's algorithm into Samaritan, which actually makes perfect sense in POI canon - the Correction was essentially just Insight being executed in a more subtle manner on a smaller scale.

 

This is intended purely as a one-shot. While Captain America would appreciate the lives saved by Northern Light's actions, and the considerable effort Finch went through to ensure that no human being ever saw the illegally acquired raw data that the Machine uses to make its predictions, he would be utterly appalled by the mass privacy invasion that Northern Lights represents, and the dozens of people Control had murdered to keep her project secret. The Avengers working their way through the moral and political implications of that project would probably result in a far larger and more complicated story that I want to write about this. If anyone else wants to write that story, please let me know.


End file.
